The Non-Christian Cross: An Enquiry into the Origin and History of the Symbol Eventually Adopted as That of Our Religion — John Shaqi
The Non-Christian Cross: An Enquiry into the Origin and History of the Symbol Eventually Adopted as That of Our ReligionParsons, John Denham
Religion
The Non-Christian Cross: An Enquiry into the Origin and History of the Symbol Eventually Adopted as That of Our Religion
Parsons, John Denham
Crosses
These references to the fact that in days of old many very naturally
came to the conclusion that the Creator and Giver of Life and only
Saviour must be bi-sexual, should remind us Christians that our
assertion that the Infinite Spirit is "Our Father" is not from all
points of view an improvement upon the ideas of the ancients. For they
also, and rightly, conceived what we wrongly ignore, _viz._, that the
Infinite Author of all existence must also be "Our Mother."
In this respect Protestants have if possible gone even further astray
than members of the Greek and Roman Churches. For in the veneration
paid by the latter to Mary of Nazareth as the Bride of God, the Mother
of God, the Star of the Sea, and the Queen of Heaven, can be seen a
survival, however toned down or distorted, of the old idea that the
Deity must necessarily be of both sexes.
Even the plainly evident fact that, while in pre-Christian days the
symbol of the cross represented the two sexual powers in conjunction,
it has in Christian times come to be considered the symbol of Life as
being the symbol of the SON of God, should, moreover, lead us to note
that our religion scarcely does justice to the part played in the
economy of Nature by the fair sex. This is doubtless due to the fact
that the moulding of our creed and the interpretation of things hard to
be understood has for the most part been in the hands of the sex which,
as the author belongs to it, may by way of contrast be called unfair.
What, for instance, can be more unfair than the assumption that God, if
incarnated as one of the genus Homo, must have been born a male? Yet
that assumption is at the very basis of modern Christianity.
Moreover, even granting that the Deity was specially incarnated in
Jesus the Nazarene and therefore as a male, why should we, as if
supposing that a passing form could stamp its sex upon an Infinite
Spirit, speak of "God the Son" yet never of "God the Daughter?"
The fact is that the natural disabilities and disadvantages of the
childbearing sex have from the first resulted in the power of the male
sex to rule the roast, and one result of the predominance thus ensured
to the male sex by the laws of Nature has of course been a similar
predominance for the opinion that the Creator is of the male sex.
Some enthusiastic champion of her sex, alluding to the fact that the
opposing sex now has a monopoly of the priesthood, may even go so far
as to ask with a special meaning, Has not Man from the beginning made
God in his own image?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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